FT MAGAZINE When New Zealander Geoffrey Cox became editor of ITN news in 1956, he identified his young newscaster Robin Day as the man to bring the political interview out of the Victorian era.
Up to then, the interviewing of politicians by broadcasters was a tortuously polite affair: questioning ministers was seen as the prerogative of parliament, and the BBC felt straitjacketed by its requirement to be non-partisan. Interviewers generally restricted themselves to asking politicians if they had anything of interest to say to the nation.
Day quickly made waves. In 1956, he asked Harry Truman if he regretted dropping the atomic bomb. The next year, he interviewed Colonel Nasser in Cairo and pressed him on whether he accepted the existence of Israel.
But the forensic, domestic political interview truly came of age on February 23 1958, when Day interviewed prime minister Harold Macmillan. After checking with Cox, Day decided to delve into a subject all the newspapers were speculating about – whether the foreign secretary, who had been under steady fire from Labour MPs following his role in the Suez crisis, was about to be sacked. “What do you say, prime minister,” Day began, “to the criticism which has been made, especially in Conservative newspapers, about Mr Selwyn Lloyd, the foreign secretary?”
Macmillan replied: “I do not intend to make a change simply as a result of pressure. I do not believe that is wise. It is not in accordance with my view of loyalty.”
Today, in the age of Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys, Day’s style seems courteous, even courtly. But it caused a stir at the time. The Observer worried that television might usurp parliament. The Daily Telegraph wondered “who is to draw the line at which the effort to entertain stops”. And the Daily Mirror’s Cassandra fumed that “the idiot’s lantern is getting too big for its ugly gleam”.
But coming between the Suez crisis and the early 1960s satire boom, Day’s line of questioning caught the less deferential mood of the times – and ushered in an era when the televised interview would become not just a key part of the political process in Britain, but also much more entertaining.
